Friends and family recalled Miranda as a good brother, a fun guy to hang around with and a talented artist. In photographs, he smiles wide and, in drawings covering the walls of his bedroom, he showed a knack for realistic profiles of people and images of birds and other animals.

“He was funny and silly,” said Keila Fontes, 21, his girlfriend since eighth grade. “He made me happy. We were best friends.”

Miranda lived with his mother and step-father on Prospect Avenue in Brockton. Up until December, when money got tight, he attended Massasoit Community College for art. He wanted to become an art teacher and talked about returning to his native Cape Verde.

In recent months he had been looking for a job to save money to return to college, his mother said. A couple weeks ago he told her he was going to The Lit to apply to become a cook.

Goncalves and her family moved to Brockton from Cape Verde in 1998. Miranda was 6 at the time. After his older brother, Jerson, took his own life five years ago, also dying at age 21, the family moved to Holbrook for a few years before returning to Brockton two years ago.

Miranda attended Brockton High School but left before graduating, earning a GED instead. His two younger brothers – Filipe, 15, and Danny Resende, 12– both said Miranda was a good older brother.

Recently, Miranda took Danny and his friend to Dave & Buster’s in Braintree for Danny’s birthday. They pooled tickets and got a giant bouncing ball.

“We just really had fun that day,” Danny said.

Saturday afternoon, lying in bed surrounded by loved ones, Goncalves repeated again and again that Miranda was her best friend, that he loved her, that he made her happy and told her she was beautiful and wailed that she has now lost two sons.

Page 2 of 2 - She also lashed out at the city, where her son’s death marked the culmination of a week of violence.

“I needed to move from Brockton,” Goncalves said. “It’s not a good city.”